“Wicked: For Good” (2025) is a movie musical based on both the “Wicked” book by Gregory Maguire and the stage production of the same name, first shown on Broadway in 2003 with stars Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth. 

   The story follows Elphaba Thropp (Menzel) and Glinda Upland (Chenoweth) on their intertwined paths to becoming the iconic characters of the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch, along with a supporting cast featuring the future Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Wicked Witch of the East, among others. 

   While the first movie “Wicked,” adapting the first act of the Broadway play, was well-loved by audiences, the adaptation of the second act was met with mixed reviews and is almost entirely carried by strong performances from Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in their respective roles as Elphaba Thropp and Glinda Upland. 

   From the very beginning, the film is a dreadful slog when neither are onscreen. Lucky for us, there is rarely a scene that doesn’t include one or the other. They shine brightest when they’re together, and they almost make you forget how insanely bored you were up until this point. The moment they harmonize, and your ears experience the most gorgeous vocal blend of your life almost makes it all worth it. Almost.

   Without those incredible leading ladies, this movie would be, for lack of a better term, a hot mess. Depending on who you ask, it may still be. 

   With that said, is this movie’s lack of lasting impact (especially compared to the cultural revival of Oz fandom that 2024’s “Wicked” influenced) all director Jon M. Chu and his creative team’s fault? No, definitely not.

   It is well-known, at least in the Broadway world, that the second act of the “Wicked” musical is the less popular of the two, even when it was just on stage. In fact, there’s a pretty large selection of “Wicked” fans who hate Act 2 and wish Act 1 was just longer. However, I am not one of them. 

   I personally think Act 2 serves its purpose, and, for better or worse, it does ultimately give Elphaba the happy ending she so desperately deserved. That said, I do have gripes with the movie version. I understand that it is difficult to make a movie people will love out of source material they do not. Chu and his team were fighting an uphill battle with this one. 

    This review is specifically comparing “Wicked: For Good” to the version of the Broadway musical starring Idina Menzel as Elphaba and Kristen Chenoweth as Glinda. No other versions of the musical were consulted, so if you have strong opinions on who the best Boq is but they’re not mentioned here, I am truly sorry.

   The first and honestly biggest problem with “Wicked: For Good” is that Ariana Grande doesn’t feel like Glinda anymore. This is the part of the story where we should arguably feel strongest about her identity as Glinda, but she just feels like Ariana Grande with blonde hair and a pink wardrobe. 

   She sings like Ariana Grande, not like Glinda the Good Witch. In the first part, she disappeared into the role. I would even go as far as to say she was a more effective Glinda than Kristen Chenoweth in the first act. I figured I would feel the same going into the second part. But as soon as she opens her mouth in the opening number, I realized I was very, very wrong. She even riffs like herself at one point; you will absolutely know what I mean when you see it if you haven’t seen it yet, and if you have, you know exactly what part I’m talking about. 

   Being a good performer in a movie musical isn’t just about being an amazing singer, which Grande absolutely is, it’s about acting like the character acts. She does fine with this in the rest of the movie when she’s just talking, but it’s like she didn’t even try to conceal her popstar persona this time around. This is especially odd considering these movies were filmed back-to-back, so what could have changed in such a short amount of time?

   To compare Grande to Chenoweth here would be unfair of me because I am not familiar with any of Chenoweth’s other musical work. I would not be a good judge of whether Chenoweth is in-character or if that’s just the way she acts normally. 

   The second biggest issue is the addition of original songs in the movie. “No Place Like Home” and “Girl in the Bubble” add absolutely nothing to the story. “No Place Like Home” could’ve been an email, and “Girl in the Bubble” has no reason to exist other than to show off that they have Ariana Grande in this film. Both are insanely boring and take a considerable amount of runtime for the amount of nothing they provide. I said earlier that this film is only fun to watch when Erivo and Grande are onscreen, but that does not apply in either of these instances.

   In the musical, Idina Menzel says “there’s no place like home” in Act 2, but it’s not drawn out into a song. It’s a small, subtle reference to “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) without dragging it, and the audience laughs. It does its job and the plot moves forward without incident. “No Place Like Home,” in itself, is an incident. I’m probably being melodramatic but I really just don’t see the point of either of these songs and it frustrates me because, like many people, I adored the first “Wicked” movie. 

   If the writers wanted to expand on Elphaba’s relationship with the animals, they could’ve kept that scene without a musical number. It makes the scene feel long for the sake of being long.

   We as the viewers don’t need to be told that Glinda’s metaphorical bubble is popping; we’ve already seen that in the movie up to this point. That’s literally her entire arc. 

   “For Good” commits a central filmmaking sin: telling without showing. Yes, this even applies to musicals where almost everything is sung. Just call it “show, don’t sing”. 

   I have one more negative comment before we move on to what was actually “For Good” in this movie, and it is that they didn’t include Nessarose’s bitter musical number toward Elphaba at the beginning of Act 2. In this little number, Nessa (Michelle Federer) laments, “All of my life I’ve depended on you, how do you think that feels?” and this strong opener as well as the rest of the song helps the audience to sympathize with “The Wicked Witch of the East” quite fast on the most basic level instead of blindly hating her, which is exactly what the movie fans do. Why this was cut, I may never understand. 

   Now, it’s finally time to praise the movie version of Act 2. There is one thing that I think is done incredibly well here, or at least one thing in particular that sticks out as improved upon, and that is the reveal of the Tin Man. 

   Boq’s irreversible transformation is treated with the proper weight here, he doesn’t just get flustered and scurry off stage right. He is rightfully angry and honestly terrifying here. I’ve seen a lot of raving about Ethan Slater’s performance in “For Good”, and that’s not without justification, but I think the real props need to go to the makeup department. This version of the Tin Man looks phenomenal, and it almost borders on body horror, at least for me. To witness what he’s become because Nessa couldn’t let him go is deeply saddening and legitimately frightening. 

   Speaking of Boq, I think the way Nessa’s grip on him tightens through the film was really interesting to watch, and we don’t really get to see that in the musical. In the stage musical, most if not all of that development happens off-stage between acts, and Boq is already basically Nessa’s servant when we come back to them after intermission. There are a lot of small scenes showing Boq’s growing resentment and Nessa’s desperation for control before the infamous spell mishap in the movie, whereas in the musical, the only scene Boq gets as a human is right before he is transformed at the end of that same scene. 

   All in all, “Wicked: For Good” is fine for what it sets out to be. It’s a fine conclusion, it’s a fine movie, it’s all just fine. It could’ve been amazing, though, and wasted potential is always sad to see.